Associated Press: “Carrying a basket of nachos, the New Jersey governor was caught on video confronting a Chicago Cubs fan during Sunday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers. The video circulating on Twitter showed Christie leaning over to nearly get in the man’s face at Miller Park, holding the order of nachos in his left hand.”
Said Christie: “You’re a big shot.”
It was not known was caused the incident.
“You can focus on the ‘chief,’ or you can focus on the ‘of staff.’ Those who have focused on the ‘of staff’ have done pretty well.”
— Former White House chief of staff James Baker, quoted by the New York Times.
Molly Ball: “Everyone who works for Trump has to know that their turn in the barrel can come at any time, that the slavish loyalty he demands will be repaid only in abuse. Still, Priebus’s defenestration was particularly savage: a detested interloper brought in over his protestations, his best ally pushed out, Trump deafeningly silent as the new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, publicly derided him as ‘a fucking paranoid schizophrenic.’ After his dismissal was announced, he suddenly found himself alone in a black Suburban as the rest of the motorcade left for the White House without him.”
“Like Priebus, the Republican Party made a Faustian bargain when it capitulated to Trump’s takeover—it would sell its soul in order to win. But as chaos continues to swirl, Priebus is surely not the only Republican asking himself: What was that victory good for?”
When asked, Priebus said: “We have a Republican president, a Republican Senate, and a Republican House. I have no regrets at all.”
Jeffrey Toobin: “Trump now seems set on terminating Mueller’s investigation, which he could attempt to do by directing the head of the Justice Department (whoever that winds up being) to fire him. This, of course, would be reminiscent of President Nixon’s determination, in October, 1973, to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor. But a dismissal of Mueller would be worse. Nixon clashed with Cox over what was at least an arguable matter of principle—specifically, whether the prosecutor had the right to subpoena the White House tapes. Trump wants Mueller gone simply because he doesn’t want to be investigated.”
“An order to fire Mueller would be an abuse of power, but one in keeping with the way that Trump has conducted his Presidency. On the Saturday night that Cox was fired, he said, ‘Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people’ to decide. So it remains today.”
Jonathan Swan: “Watch for Trump to take his tax reform sales pitch on the road in August — with some top aides looking to stage a series of speeches through the Rust Belt.”
“Trump was never authentically enthusiastic, or even particularly knowledgeable, about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators privately joke about Trump’s substance-free phone calls to pitch them. ‘It’s gonna be great,’ he’d tell senators, before riffing about how ‘the pools’ (risk pools) would solve everything. But the President is authentically excited about tax reform, so we’ll see if his salesmanship is more effective here.”
“Groups spending millions in anonymous donations are leading the outside efforts to either defend President Trump or sell his agenda with voters and Congress, despite the president’s repeated calls to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington of special-interest money,” USA Today reports.
“The political empire affiliated with billionaire Charles Koch has spent $2 million to date to advance Trump’s tax-cut blueprint and will hold events this week in Washington to kick off the next phase of its multimillion-dollar campaign to drive congressional support for a comprehensive tax plan to slice corporate tax rates and enact broader tax cuts.”
Jonathan Swan: “West Wingers are excited and nervous about what his arrival means, but one told me it won’t be enough for Kelly to fix processes and lines of authority; he needs to change the culture. For six months, White House officials have leaked unflattering anecdotes about the President and planted hit pieces on their colleagues. Officials wander freely in and out of the Oval, and some, like Omarosa, never worried about protocol, and used their personal relationships with Trump to subvert Reince’s authority.”
Said one White House official: “We’ve got a culture problem right now. Now you have Kelly come into this. Is it a new power center or someone without a dog in the fight? Is that level of respect that he comes in with, what it takes to have some kind of calming presence in the West Wing? Reince didn’t have the credibility to broker peace between anybody.”
“That has had a big impact. If you leave out a whole political party, and then you chasten them for not helping, well, that unites that party.”
— Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), quoted by the New York Times, on how Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) decision to cut Democrats out of the legislative process has unified them.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said that “yes,” it’s official White House policy that the Senate shouldn’t hold a vote on another issue — not even an imminent crisis like raising the debt ceiling— until the Senate votes again on health care, Politico reports.
Said Mulvaney: “You can’t promise folks you’re going to do something for seven years, and then not do it.”
This email made my weekend:
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“Kellyanne Conway, whose official title is counselor to the president, declined on Sunday to say whether she and all of the White House staff would report directly to newly-installed Chief of Staff John Kelly after a shakeup in the White House last week that included Reince Priebus’ ouster,” NBC News reports.
Said Conway: “I will speak with General Kelly and the president about that, as will Mr. Scaramucci.”
Anthony Scaramucci has previously said that he reports directly to the president.
Tim Alberta: “This no longer seems accidental. Trump has, since taking office, consistently referred to Republicans as though he is not one himself—it’s invariably ‘they’ or ‘them.’ Unlike past presidents of his party, Trump entered the White House with few personal relationships with prominent Republicans: donors, lobbyists, party activists, politicians. This liberated him to say whatever he pleased as a candidate, and by firing Priebus, Trump might feel similarly liberated. The fear now, among Republicans in his administration and on Capitol Hill, is that Trump will turn against the party, waging rhetorical warfare against a straw-man GOP whom he blames for the legislative failures and swamp-stained inertia that has bedeviled his young presidency. It would represent a new, harsher type of triangulation, turning his base against the politicians of his own party that they elected.”
“Things have not yet escalated to that point. But some, including officials in his own administration, took the dismissal of Priebus as a signal that Trump is willing to go rogue against the GOP… More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans—and him, a party of one. If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP. But it’s not Priebus’s problem anymore.”
Jack Goldsmith: “The Trump Presidency is a strange combination of menacing and impotent. It is also fractured internally like no presidency in American history.”
“The menacing element is plain. Trump sets everyone on edge with incessant verbal attacks and relentlessly indecorous behavior. The maelstrom that is his presidency seems like it could at any moment push the country off the rails—massive pardons to kill the Russia investigation, a Justice Department meltdown as a result of firings and resignations, a North Korean miscalculation, or who-knows-what-other-crazy-thing. Many people worry how the impulsive Trump will handle his first crisis.”
“As for impotence, Trump has accomplished nothing beyond conservative judicial appointments. His administration is otherwise a comedy of errors in the exercise of executive power. What is most remarkable is the extent to which his senior officials act as if Trump were not the chief executive. Never has a president been so regularly ignored or contradicted by his own officials. I’m not talking about so-called “deep state” bureaucrats. I’m talking about senior officials in the Justice Department and the military and intelligence and foreign affairs agencies. And they are not just ignoring or contradicting him in private. They are doing so in public for all the world to see.”
Out this fall: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy X. Lee.
“Since the start of Donald Trump’s presidential run, one question has quietly but urgently permeated the observations of concerned citizens: What is wrong with him?”
Out this week: Conscience of a Conservative by Sen. Jeff Flake.
“The Republican party used to play to a broader audience, one that demanded that we accomplish something. But in this era of dysfunction, our primary accomplishment has been constructing the argument that we’re not to blame. We have decided that it is better to build and maintain a majority by using the levers of power rather than the art of persuasion and the battle of ideas. We’ve decided that putting party over country is okay.”
“Hackers at at a competition in Las Vegas were able to successfully breach the software of U.S. voting machines in just 90 minutes on Friday, illuminating glaring security deficiencies in America’s election infrastructure,” The Hill reports.
“Weary Republicans in Washington may be ready to move on from health care, but conservatives across the United States are warning the GOP-led Congress not to abandon its pledge to repeal the Obama-era health law — or risk a political nightmare in next year’s elections,” the AP reports.
“The Senate’s failure to pass a repeal has triggered a new wave of fear and outrage among the party. Conservative groups say senators who voted against the bill are ‘sellouts.’… Trump’s allies pledge to run conservative challengers against uncooperative Republicans. And party leaders are warning of deep disillusionment and cynicism among the most passionate GOP voters.”
For members: What Three ‘No’ Votes Had In Common
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.